With the release of The Paper on 5 September and Spinal Tap II on 12 September, we’re not just getting sequels to two of the most beloved comedy productions of all time. We’re also getting sound evidence that the mockumentary is alive and kicking.
The Paper is the successor to The Office (US), the American remake of Ricky Gervais’s seminal series. The set-up is similar, with the same film crew following an all-new bunch of provincial losers, this time centred around a failing Midwestern newspaper.
Spinal Tap II should need no such context, but the young and TikTok-addled may be unaware of its heritage. This Is Spinal Tap all but wrote the book on the mockumentary format, and Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (to give the film its full name) picks up with our luck-headed rock group some 40 years on.
Let’s back up for a second. What in blazes is a mockumentary anyway? The word itself is a portmanteau of ‘mock’ and ‘documentary’, and relates to a film or TV show that claims to be a documentary, but is actually a work of scripted fiction, typically towards comedic ends.
Make no mistake, mockumentaries are seriously hot right now. All of which has prompted us to offer up a tribute to the format.
Here are 10 of the best mockumentaries, from across the closely aligned worlds of TV and cinema.
10. Borat
Sacha Baron Cohen’s mockumentary style is quite unique, mixing together scripted skits and real-life encounters with oblivious marks. But which of the two Borat movies to include – the one where our oblivious Kazakhstani reporter (played by Cohen himself) embarks on a US road trip, bumbling through encounters with feminists and evangelical Christians? Or the one where he embarks on a US road trip with his daughter, offending Trump supporters and exposing Rudy Giuliani as a total sleazeball? They kind of meld into one, so just watch them both, if your sides can take it.
9. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
The Lonely Island crew (that’s Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone and Andy Samberg) step up to the mockumentary plate, and promptly knock it out of the park. Samberg’s Conner Friel is the quintessential modern pop brat, as precociously talented as he is crass and ridiculous.
The film’s broad swipes at the modern pop music industry aren’t particularly subtle or clever, but the resulting film is almost painfully recognisable (largely thanks to a bunch of game celebrity appearances), and the music itself is perfectly pitched.
8. Waiting for Guffman
Christopher Guest has his fingerprints all over three of the movies featured on this list – four if you count Spinal Tap II. In 1996, he fully took the reins of a mockumentary for the first time, co-writing (with Eugene Levy), directing, and starring in Waiting for Guffman.
The film follows the production of a musical by a small town community theatre, with a cast of hammy amateurs giving it their all. Suffice to say, the amount of talent involved in this fictional production is inversely proportional to that of the real one. Guest’s camp director, Corky St. Clair, is a particular hoot.
7. Cunk on Earth
You don’t have to be British to ‘get’ Cunk on Earth, but it undoubtedly helps. This spin-off from Charlie Brooker's irreverent TV review show, Weekly Wipe, is fashioned after the kind of mid-budget documentary that’s all too common on UK public service broadcasting channels like BBC 2 or Channel 4.
However, the key element is Philomena Cunk herself, played in inimitably guileless fashion by comedic actor Diane Morgan. Her obtuse observations on human history are delivered in gloriously deadpan fashion, rendering real-life experts speechless, and the viewer on the floor.
6. Best in Show
Here’s an absolute gem of a mockumentary from Christopher Guest, star of This is Spinal Tap and its recent sequel, and Eugene Levy of American Pie and Schitt’s Creek. It purports to follow five entrants to the supremely bitchy (in every sense) Mayflower Dog Show.
Remarkably, much of the dialogue is improvised, and the fact that it’s so funny is a testament to the comedic chops and acting talent of its cast, which also includes Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Lynch, Michael McKean, Catherine O'Hara, and Parker Posey. That’ll do it.
5. What We Do in the Shadows
One of the movies that helped kick off the Taika Waititi obsession of the past decade, 2014’s What We Do in the Shadows, sees a film crew documenting the humdrum lives of a Wellington flat share made up of ancient vampires.
The combination of the supernatural and the quotidian is particularly delicious in the hands of Waititi and co-writer, director and star Jemaine Clement (of Flight of the Conchords fame). The film was little more than a cult hit at the time, but would spawn a popular US TV remake some five years later.
4. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is comfortably the most high-concept mockumentary on this list, and thus is as difficult to describe as it is to say. It concerns the titular young anthropomorphic shell, who lives in an Airbnb, and is painfully oblivious to the goings on in the ‘real’ world.
We get to observe his whimsical existence when a documentary filmmaker moves in following a failed marriage. The ensuing captured footage is at once incredibly meta and remarkably sweet-natured, as the two embark on an unlikely professional venture together.
3. The Office (US)
The American version of The Office has become such a monumental success and such a fixture of the repeat circuit that it’s easy to forget what a rarity it is. This is a remake of a hugely beloved mockumentary about modern office life, which was conceived and created in another country.
These things hardly ever translate successfully. And yet work out it did, running for nine seasons and 201 episodes. The show’s success lies in the way it quickly found its own much softer voice, shaped by a memorable cast of American comic talent who would become household names.
2. The Office
For our money, the original 2001 British version of The Office remains the best. It’s the most original, of course, as we follow cringey try-hard manager David Brent and the rest of the team at Wernham Hogg – a fictional but painfully real paper company based in the unglamorous town of Slough.
But it also pulls off the feat of being all killer, no filler across its 14 episodes. If anything, we were left wanting more, and the following two decades of American comedy TV would seek to provide it without ever quite matching the original’s mixture of humour and pathos.
1. This Is Spinal Tap
The movie that not only led to this month’s belated sequel but ultimately spawned several decades of brilliant mockumentaries still stands up to scrutiny today.
Co-written and directed by comedy legend Rob Reiner in his directorial debut, it brilliantly skewers the classic rockumentary and hoary ‘70s rock bands, as a fictional English group embarks on a US tour. We can argue about which of these mockumentaries is the funniest, but there’s no argument over which of them has made the biggest mark on popular culture.
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